Chook roast | Women in management

A FEW anecdotes provide a good starting point for roasting Australian business for its failure to promote women. The first is from someone who worked with
Bob Joss
, the American brought in to run
Westpac Banking Corp
after its near-death experience in the 1990s.

Joss was stunned when, soon after arriving at Westpac’s Martin Place headquarters, he attended his first management meetings and no women were present. He quickly moved to adopt gender diversity in Westpac’s management by poaching senior women from other, more enlightened, institutions. He also promoted internal candidates who had been languishing under the male hegemony.

Joss used to talk about playing golf with women. He said that, unlike men, women would not allow “gimme" putts (where a player does not actually have to play the shot, taking it as given). Joss found himself being challenged by women to show he had the talent to sink a putt that a man would gift him. That is, the women did not conform to the men’s club rules – they were not afraid to challenge the status quo.

More than 20 years later, there are still barriers for women in management. Westpac has a world-leading female chief executive in
Gail Kelly
, but only one other woman in its 11-strong group executive ranks. Kelly deserves credit for imposing an internal target for women in management of 50 per cent. But more needs to be done to achieve a greater depth of female executives at the bank’s most senior level.

The second anecdote comes from someone who has sat in many board meetings of an ASX top 50 company. This person, who does not wish to be named, watched in awe as a female non-executive director was the only person on the board to challenge the male CEO directly. She broke the board’s accepted protocol, which meant non-executive directors must address management questions to the chairman. Events since then have shown that the company in question needed greater scrutiny of its management.

Improving gender diversity in management ranks is glacially slow as shown by the latest data from Chief Executive Women, prepared by consultants
Bain & Company
.

The CEW report shows that although women have been graduating from university at higher rates than men since 1985, a man’s chance of making it to senior executive ranks in big ­companies is nine times greater than a woman’s.

The report also says that the number of women on boards of the top 200 companies is a woeful 15 per cent. The number slumps to just 10 per cent in the next 300 companies. It is an absolutely disgraceful 8 per cent for the companies smaller than the top 500.

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Frustrations bubbled over at the breakfast function in early February when the report was released. Leading banker
Peter Hunt
said he was sick of attending the same event for three years to be told there was little progress in promoting women. He called for the federal government to impose quotas for a minimum of 25 per cent female board directors. His argument is that the system will not change until it is forced.

The CEW survey reveals a chicken-and-egg problem. It indicates you need more women in senior ranks and at board level in order to get more women in management ranks. Chook Roast reckons chief executives need to show leadership to get talented women into top-line management jobs.

One solution is to structure roles differently. For example, two women could share a general manager role, along the lines of a “job split" rather than a job share. The idea is to match up two women with complementary skills, with both working three or four days a week. Each would have specific areas of focus, such as sales, profit and loss management, team management, recruitment, writing board papers etc. Each could slot into the other’s role on their days off.

It is not uncommon for a general manager or group executive role at a major bank to require 100 hours a week at work. Women tend to self­select out of these environments; they would rather go and run their own business where the hours worked have greater payback.

This roast could just as easily target the un­conscious male bias in the US, judging by Facebook chief operating officer
Sheryl Sandberg
’s new book. Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, focuses on sexism in business, including the way women suffer “punishment for success".

Sandberg says she never bragged about her many achievements, including being the only woman among the seven people who won the prize for the highest first-year academic score at Harvard Business School. As a woman, she took the view that it was better to keep quiet. The same applies in Australia. Women are advised not to be vocal about their achievements or men will find them threatening.

Sandberg advises women to be pleasant and likeable. She says this is playing by the archaic rules of the male world but she says there is hope. When there are enough women on boards, the system can be changed from within. At the current rate of director appointments in Australia, that will be in 2025.